The search lasted several days, and ended the way everyone feared. An elderly man known as Dedo Jane, from the village of Jastrebnik, was found dead on Mount Osogovo, after an intensive hunt across the whole mountain area. He had dementia - a condition that made both the search and his own sense of direction harder.

An on-site inspection was carried out, and on the public prosecutor's order the body was sent for an autopsy to establish the exact circumstances of death. For now there are no indications of anything other than the tragic accident of a man who got lost where the terrain doesn't forgive.

Behind news like this stands a question few ask out loud: how prepared are we as a society to care for the most vulnerable? When a man with dementia can go missing and several days can pass before he's found, that's not just one family's personal tragedy - it's also a picture of how dense or thin the net is that's supposed to catch such people before the mountain does.

Dementia isn't rare, and mountain villages are aging. Dedo Jane is today's news; tomorrow, without a system that reacts in time, it could easily be someone else. The question isn't whether the search was fast enough - but whether it ever had to come to a search at all.